Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad on Friday blamed the country's former Al-Qaeda affiliate for a deadly bombing against buses that were carrying evacuees outside Aleppo at the weekend.

"It was Jabhat al-Nusra, they haven't hidden it from the very start, and I think that everyone agrees that it was Nusra," Assad told Russia's RIA Novosti news agency in an interview, referring to the jihadist group now known as the Fateh al-Sham Front that has supposedly severed its ties with al-Qaeda.